


but in the silence we can make a sound

by IvyOnTheHolodeck



Series: higher, faster, everlasting [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alessandra keeps getting nat 20s on her investigation checks, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, IN SPACE!, Massage, Oh My God They Were Bunkmates, Pilot Annie Wire, Sapphics in Space, Set during the war, solving mysteries as a love language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25940080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyOnTheHolodeck/pseuds/IvyOnTheHolodeck
Summary: “Aw, babe, you waited for me?”Alessandra lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Keeping her eyes on her desk, she says, “You’re late.”~Before Alessandra "Cockroach" Strong was a private eye, she served in the Solar Military.
Relationships: Alessandra Strong/Annie Wire
Series: higher, faster, everlasting [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796644
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	but in the silence we can make a sound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Captain_Aurinko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Aurinko/gifts).



> This is 100% based on CaptainAurinko's brilliant headcanon that Alessandra's Glorious Battlewife is in fact Annie Wire. It's also based on me being a dumbass sapphic stuck in quarantine who would very much like to hold a cute girl's hand.

“Aw, babe, you waited for me?”

Alessandra lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Keeping her eyes on her desk, she says, “You’re late.”

Something damp whacks the back of her head, making her jump. She pushes her chair away from her desk and picks up a wet towel off the floor, giving Tig a look.

“Oops, I missed,” Tig deadpans. “Could you toss that in the reclaimer for me?”

Alessandra does. “You were due in an hour ago.”

“Blue Squadron got pinned down behind Tau-7, and they jammed our radio. I had to land in a crater and pretend to be a rock. I told you, Strong, don’t brood over my safety. Brooding’s for chickens. The only wings I fly on are neocarbonite fiber.”

“I’ll stop worrying when you stop treating every survey mission like an audition for the Phobos Flight Hall of Fame.”

“I’m a pilot, fancy flying is literally my job.” Tig rummages in the trunk at the foot of her bed. Alessandra’s grateful that their barracks are empty for once, all the others at the mess hall. With no one else to call her on it, she can keep her eyes on Tig as long as she likes, reassuring herself that her best friend really is back in one piece. “Plus, I came straight here after my debrief and decontamination cycle.” Which means she skipped out on dinner to make sure Alessandra knew she was alright, since she knew Alessandra would be waiting for her. Just like Alessandra knew she’d skip dinner, which is why she has a take-away plate of noodles and greens steaming on her side table.

Tig pulls a heat pack out of her trunk and plugs it in before perching on her bunk and tearing into the food. Alessandra sits beside her, glad to see her eating, here, alive. 

The pilot rolls her neck and winces. Alessandra frowns. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit. Try craning your head through a darkened windshield for hours, see how you feel.”

“Want a hand?”

“God, please.”

Tig shifts so her back faces Alessandra, glossy black curls cascading down her spine. Ignoring the warmth in her belly, Alessandra presses her thumbs into Tig’s shoulders, massaging out the cramps. The woman is more knot than muscle. Alessandra’s fingers dig into a particularly tight patch, and Tig makes an indecent noise, leaning into the touch. Alessandra’s face heats.

The barracks are pretty quiet for once, as quiet as the interior of an aluminoid building ever can be on this barren rock they’re calling a home base. Air whistles through the vents, circulating oxygen in and carbon dioxide out of the habitable zones and down into the algae tanks below the station. She’d thought the air smelled musty and metallic when she was first recruited, but these days she doesn’t notice. 

“Found a new stream for us,” Tig says, sounding more relaxed. “Remember the lion from Colosseum 2? Apparently he’s got his own dry-cleaning sitcom now with the lead actress of Witchslapped. They’re calling it the Lion and the Witch’s Wardrobe.”

“Nothing like escapism to help us forget we’re in the middle of a war.”

Tig snorts. “Not like I need help.”

“What do you mean?”

The pilot slumps under Alessandra’s fingers. “Nothing. Dumb joke.”

“Uh-huh.” Alessandra kneads Tig’s shoulderblades with the heels of her hands. She knows Tig’s silences well enough to tell when she’s got something to get off her chest.

“…Actually, can you keep a secret?”

“Haven’t told anyone about your stash, have I?”

“You better not, those Allen wrenches are mine.” Tig breathes out. “Hell with it.” She gathers up her hair, twisting it away from the nape of her neck. At the very base of her skull clings a beetle-like chip, its hooks buried into her flesh.

Alessandra’s heart drops.

She’s heard the rumors, of course, the tales of children being kidnapped and brainwashed to fight in the war, their very thoughts hacked. The whispers of a mind-control device with years of training stashed in its memory, an external cerebellum, that could transform any layperson into a soldier. She’d chalked the stories up to Outer Rim propaganda. 

Alessandra’s fingers ghost over the implant.

“Careful,” Tig warns her.

“Is it volatile?”

“No, but that tickles, and the last person who tried tickling me lost half his teeth and an ear.”

“I didn’t know the Children’s Brigade was real.” Grief and indignation condense against her skin.

“Ta-da,” Tig says, sagging back against Alessandra’s chest. “Don’t push, folks, you can all get an autograph.”

“Are the stories true?”

“Yep. Got conscripted when I was a kid.”

“Is that why you have a Hanuumanian accent?”

Tig huffs a laugh, her head falling back against Alessandra’s chest. Soft wisps of her hair tickle Alessandra’s collarbone. “Wouldn’t know. The bug wipes our memories. Easier to keep a bunch of brats in line when they aren’t screaming for their parents.” She blows a curl out of her face. “Don’t even know my name.”

Alessandra tries to imagine growing up without her moms. The idea leaves her hollow. No body armor has ever served her as well as her moms’ belief in her. “I’m sorry.”

“Eh, don’t be. No last name means it’ll be easier to duck the brass when I finally grab my wings and run for Neptune to start my own flight academy.”

“Would you want it?” Alessandra wraps her arms around Tig’s waist, tucking Tig’s head under her chin. “Your old name.”

Tig twitches a shrug. “Yeah, and I’d like the war to be over, and to set the sarge’s whistle on fire. You know the saying - if wishes were space whales…” She shakes her head and elbows Alessandra. “So are we gonna finish watching this year’s showing of Europavision or not?”

It’s a deflection, but Alessandra lets it slide. “Bet you twenty creds the hurdy-gurdy player wins.”

“The Venusian guy? Strong, do you need your ears checked?”

“He had the best costume,” Alessandra says drily. “Convincing replica of a feather pillow’s acid trip.”

And yeah, there’s Tig’s laugh. She’d do a lot for that laugh.

They end up curled on the same thin mattress, Alessandra critiquing the singers’ performances while Tig retrofits Alessandra’s night vision goggles for the third time this month. Alessandra lives for the quiet moments like these, the pauses for breath in the war’s dissertation. She always knows it could be the last time she feels the pilot’s warm weight against her legs, so she folds moments like this away into the trunk of her mind, treasures that time can’t touch.

It bothers her, that some scientist reached into Tig’s mental trunk and ripped out entire years.

They can’t have taken everything, though. Alessandra’s eyes narrow. She’s willing to bet that Tig’s original name sounded similar to the one she carries now. Her kidnappers would have chosen something close enough that she’d respond to it automatically.

And if that’s true… 

* * *

_ Three weeks later. _

Alessandra bangs on the underbelly of the speeder, noticing with amusement how every rivet gleams. Tig has a tendency to pamper her ship.

A hatch opens a few feet away, and Tig’s grin pokes out, bits of her hair curling free. “If you cough on me, Strong, no jury would indict me for the consequences.”

Alessandra cocks a brow. “Charming. If that’s how you greet your friends, I’m glad I’m not your enemy.”

Tig snorts and hauls herself back into the belly of the ship. Moments later, a rope ladder drops down from the hatch, which Alessandra takes as an invitation.

Tig’s ship is built for speed, not luxury. The designers clearly hadn’t anticipated more than one person in the cockpit at once, leaving Alessandra squeezed between the back of the mushroom leather pilot’s seat and Tig’s side on the ship floor. Alessandra looks around while Tig reels up the ladder and seals the hatch. The ship may be an old model, but it’s in spectacular condition, with endless embellishments that must be Tig’s own innovations. Alessandra raises an eyebrow at the airhorn wired into the navigation system.

Tig digs an elbow into her side. “Not going to give me the Mercurian Plague, are you? Word on the street was you threw up everything but a lung and a white flag.”

“I wasn’t sick.”

“That’s not what the doc said.”

Of course Tig had checked in on her. “Dr. Freeman owed me a favor. A couple false orders for medical tests were the least he could do.” She unbuttons her coat pocket and passes Tig the miniature legal pad within. “It gave me an excuse to go to Solar Military HQ.”

Tig stares at the pad, her expression blank. “What are these?”

“The brass have mostly expunged their records of the Children’s Brigade - probably trying to dodge the Solar ethics committee - but no one ever cleans out storage.” At least, not the secured storage cells deep in the vaults that officially don’t exist. Alessandra’s sporting a nasty burn across her calf, and SMHQ now has a warrant out for the arrest of a masked infiltrator with her height and build. Worth it. “All I could find was a list of names and ages.”

“You think I’m on this list.” Still no outward reaction.

“They had no right to take your old identity. I don’t know if you still want it, but the choice is yours.” She hopes she hasn’t overstepped. Her mother always used to scold her for minding other people’s business, even as her mum winked and passed her a new set of lockpicks under the table. It seemed so natural to Alessandra, back when she was a kid - ignorance was dangerous, so she’d learn everything she could to survive. It took her awhile to learn that knowing too much could be dangerous too.

“Thought you kept the recon to missions, Strong. If I tell you I want to know who’s in charge of Dark Matters, will you sleuth that out too?”

She’d certainly try. “You don’t have to read it.”

“As if. Tell me if you think one fits.” Tig looks down at the paper, her shoulders just a little too tight to be casual. A pulsing light on the console gilds her hair. “Arti Gupta, age 9... Nah, not feeling it. Tiger Au, 11. Ehh, no. Vestige Lambert, 6. I don’t think I was that young. Tegan Jones, 8. Ugh, I hope not, can you imagine having a last name that boring?”

_ I could if it were yours _ . Alessandra has read the list enough times that she’s barely listening to the names, focusing instead on the warmth where they’re pressed together from hip to shoulder, Tig’s slender fingers flicking across the page. She’s got motor oil under her fingernails and smudged on her cheek. 

Tig’s fingers stutter over a name, and she swallows. “Fuck. This one.”

Alessandra peers at the page. “Antigone Wire, age 10.” Jesus. She’d known Tig was conscripted young - plenty had been, thanks to the Solar government lowering the minimum age of enlistment to eight - but the image of her as a lost little kid makes Alessandra wonder whether she’s on the right side of the war.

“Annie,” Tig corrects, her voice thick. “They’d call me Annie.”

“They?”

The pilot shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “They’re like shadows. I can almost - I just - no, fuck, god _ damn _ it!” She shoves the pad to the floor in a flutter of yellow pages, muffles her face in her hands, and screams.

This isn’t what Alessandra has intended. Her heartbeat pounds in her palms. “Tig, I’m sorry, I can go-“

“Don’t you fucking  _ dare _ , you complete asshole,” Tig snarls without looking up. “This is the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for me and I’m thanking you for it.”

Alessandra breathes out shakily. So she hasn’t messed things up irrevocably. “In that case, you’re welcome.”

Tig - Annie? - shoves a hand into the space between them, a thrown gauntlet of slender fingers caulked in grease. Alessandra wants nothing more than to reach out and touch, but she pauses. They’ve never held hands before. Plenty of their fellow soldiers were born on Titan, where clasping hands is considered too intimate for public affection.

Tig pulls her head out from between her knees long enough to level Alessandra with a glare. “Are you going to hold my damn hand or not?”

“As a friend?” It’s a dangerous question, but Alessandra’s done dancing around this, whatever this is.

“No.”

“If this is some kind of payback, I’m not asking for it.”

“Fucking hell, Alessandra, I don’t want to hold your hand because you broke into military archives for me. I want to hold your hand because of that,  _ and _ because you’ve got more brains than our entire platoon combined, and you’ve got the same terrible taste in streams as I do, and you’re a nosy jerk, and you’re the best person I’ve met out here.”

“Not a ton of dating material on a military base,” Alessandra points out, the corner of her mouth tugging up. 

“Tell that to Robbins, she’s fucked in every room on the base, including the decontamination chamber.” Tig twitches her fingers, impatient.

Alessandra takes her hand. 

Their fingers lace together with the ease of old familiarity. Tig runs the pad of a finger back and forth over the sensitive skin where Alessandra’s palm meets her thumb, sending tingles up her spine, even as her spirit sinks into the touch. Alessandra tugs the pilot closer, exhaling when Tig rests her head on Alessandra’s shoulder, cheek warm against her skin. The low light of the cockpit plays over their entwined hands. 

“Will you look for them?” Alessandra asks after a moment. She knows what her own answer would be, but Tig has an entire life outside of the girl who was Annie.

“Yeah,” Tig says, her voice humming against Alessandra’s side. “I’d like to have a home planet. Flying is the best feeling in the world, but it only works if there’s somewhere to land.” She twists to give Alessandra a crooked smile. “Turns out it’s nice having someone to come home to.”

Alessandra’s heart pounds. She leans in, pausing when their noses brush, searching those dark eyes for permission. Catching Alessandra’s jacket collar, Tig bridges the last inches between them and presses the smile on her lips to Alessandra’s own. 

Alessandra’s senses flood with the taste of cinnamon gum and motor oil, the tickle of soft curls, the sound of Tig’s sigh as Alessandra wraps an arm tight around her waist. Tig shifts so she’s kneeling between Alessandra’s legs, setting Alessandra’s body alight where they press together, soft and strong and mortal.

“You know,” Alessandra says, breathless, when they finally pull away for air, “if we pry a flange off the antigrav leak sensor, the automated system will put the entire ship bay under hermetic seal for at least an hour while it runs remote diagnostics. No one would bother us.”

Tig’s grin gleams as she laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m on tumblr at [ivyontheholodeck](https://ivyontheholodeck.tumblr.com) \- come say hi!


End file.
